The National Organization for Women protested the Naval Academy in Annapolis after it was learned that upperclassmen had chained a female first-year student named Gwen Dreyer to a urinal. NOW called for strict disciplinary measures against the male participants, saying that they should "be forced to go through sensitivity training and their graduation should be deferred until they understand what they have done." The group did not, however, seek action against any of the female upperclassmen who participated in the hazing ritual.

One academy woman strongly objected that the incident was "not a matter of gender, it's part of life here." She told the Baltimore Sun that she had participated in the hazing of females and that before the 1989 Army-Navy football game, she had "helped to strip, tar and feather a West Point cadet." Other midshipmen also told the Washington Post that the incident was not unusual, saying that upperclassmen are often tied to chairs and put outside or have their heads put in toilets as retaliation by plebes they command. They also doubted that Dreyer was targeted because she was a woman, but instead think the episode grew out of Dreyer's involvement in a spirited snowball fight.

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